


Spoiler: Pariv BEARly Survives

by hbxplain



Series: More Lives Than One [6]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), More Lives Than One, Original Work
Genre: A Bear Appears, Character Study, Combat, Dragonborn - Freeform, Gen, Pariv Gets Left On Read By Helm, Pariv Rages, Pariv's POV, Written by Loxley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 21:04:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20432423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hbxplain/pseuds/hbxplain
Summary: Pariv kills a bear and some bandits.





	Spoiler: Pariv BEARly Survives

**Author's Note:**

> Another reminder: this is for our DnD campaign MLTO, and the full campaign can be found on the wattpad account "stormcause"!

The green-silver eyes squinted in concentration; the tongue peeked out of the corner of the long, toothy mouth. A clawed forefinger met a similar thumb and slowly, patiently, pulled the end of the rope through the last knot. Pariv sighed, holding up the contraption to examine it.

“That’s the best I’ll get out here,” he muttered to himself, “when all I have is rope and sticks. Guess I’ll see if it’s any good if I’m still starving tomorrow…” Pariv paused. Something rustled, a twig snapped, and a branch was swayed somewhere to the… south of him. Upwind. He sniffed. It was something big, something that shouldn’t be this far north; but it was here, and it was dangerous.

The dragonborn began to rise from his kneeling position, stretching the movement over an expanse of time and doing his best to keep the timing consistent. Any sudden movements might alert the-

Pariv toppled backward to the ground, the loss of balance landing him hard on a branch which subsequently sent a _crack!_ reverberating through the forest. The rustling behind him ceased, quickly replaced by a sound he had really been hoping not to hear which shook Pariv to his feet with haste. The roaring bear crashed down from its stand to all fours and barreled towards the unprepared vagabond, making even the seven-foot-tall draconic humanoid seem petite by comparison. Pariv gulped, trying to recall his training.

Kytan could’ve taken on the beast with ease, but Pariv always preferred trapping smaller animals over hunting and fighting the larger, but more honorable, creatures. The trap he held in his hands now, though, wouldn’t help much against a creature several times its size – perhaps it could still be of use, though. The Dragonborn began running away from the bear at top speed, all-the-while trying to undo all his work on the trap, pulling the sticks out of the rope and throwing them aside, just keeping the length of rope he could work with. He heard running water up ahead, and that wasn’t good news. No matter how well Pariv could swim, the bear would certainly overtake him. It was already closing in on him, the stench of its past meals pushing against his back, driving him forward even faster.

Pariv began reassembling the rope into something more appropriate for the circumstances – but he stumbled over a log and lost his progress trying to stay upright. After a few more attempts, he finally managed to finish the knot, with little time to spare. Just as he fully looked up from his hands, he realized he was sprinting towards the edge of a ravine. The water he’d heard was a river, yes, but one that ran through the bottom of a narrow canyon at least sixty feet below. He knew he wouldn’t be able to leap the twenty foot gap to the other side, but he certainly couldn’t stand and fight the bear. Maybe if he used the bear’s momentum against it to push it into the ravine… but Pariv frowned sadly. That wouldn’t be fair. The creature was just doing what its instincts told it to. It didn’t deserve to die…

Neither did he. The freshly tied lasso was quickly thrown around a thick tree branch hanging over the edge of the ravine and the rest of the rope tossed over the edge of the cliff. Pariv didn’t have time to look at the pursuing bear, so he frantically grabbed the rope, tested it with his weight, and began to rappel down the slide of the cliff wall. He successfully made it down – but he had mistaken his prior calculations. The ravine was at least sixty feet deep here. The rope was fifty feet long, made shorter by the looped lasso at the end. Pariv now dangled nearly twenty feet above the riverbank. The cliff face was too shear to climb down without much difficulty, but leaping down would surely hurt him-

Then the bear, furious it had lost its chase, roared in defeat and made the choice for him. Pariv looked up in time to see several large claws swipe at the rope.

“Oh, dear.”

The Dragonborn hit the ground with enough weight and momentum to dent the red clay below him, but the ground wasn’t all that was hurt. The shock coursed up his legs, shaking his teeth and twisting his left ankle. His pained yell was met in unison by one last roar of the bear, and he quickly realized that was very, very lucky. When the tears cleared from his eyes and the pain stopped dominating his mind, he saw something. There was movement, around the mouth of a shallow cave dug into the side of the ravine, about thirty feet down the river. There were figures, three of them; one was nearly Pariv’s size but the others were a bit smaller. It took him a moment to process the details of what he was seeing, but looking closer, a rather unexpected scene took place.

A large orc – no, he wasn’t an orc; the skin wasn’t quite as gray, the teeth weren’t quite as prominent – carried two large sacks on his shoulders, one noticeably smaller than the other. Beside him, two… Pariv wasn’t sure what they were. They had round ears, flat faces, and strange skin; instead of scales like Pariv or hard, tough hides like the orcs he’d met, their skin seemed soft and much too thin. Whatever they were, they held another long sack between the two of them, each holding one end – and Pariv realized with horror what the sacks were. People, bound and gagged, of the same race of the two smaller non-orcs.

Pariv watched, pain streaming through his leg, up his spine, and straight into the base of his skull, as the three bandits heaved the hostages into the cave. The sun had been near setting when Pariv made the trap, so the ravine was quickly filling with shadows and was so, so cold, not that the silver-scaled Dragonborn minded. The men disappeared into the cave and shortly after, one, two, three flashes of orange light emitted before a steady glow filled the cave, spilling out over the river.

Taking a deep, shaking breath, Pariv pulled the quarterstaff from his back, braced the bottom against the ravine floor, and slowly pushed himself onto his right foot. Using the staff as a crutch, he began limping towards the glowing cave, trying to smother the sound of his pained, trembling breaths from the bandits. He must’ve been successful, for he saw them before they noticed him. He watched the non-orc bandits drop their load with a sickening thud, uncaring of the muffled cry of pain. The third bandit held his gray hands over the fire, muttering something Pariv couldn’t quite make out, but which caused the bandits to chuckle and the hostages to shrink back in their binds in fear.

Pariv growled at the sight. He didn’t know whom or what these people were, what they wanted, or why they would have others tied up in such a way – but he knew he wouldn’t like the answers even if he had them. As he wracked his brain for training on similar situations, the half-orc stood up and squinted out into the darkness. A faint glimmer of firelight bouncing off silver scales led his eyes towards the chest of the dragonborn, then up, up, up to the eyes, glowing faintly silver just outside the ravine.

“Boys,” the half-orc snarled, “we got trouble.” The other two bandits turned to him, confused, since no one would’ve been able to follow their trail so soon; they followed his gaze, though, and quickly drew their weapons in fear. As the three bandits grouped together in the center of the cave, one stood with a mace, another with a shortsword, and the gray-skinned with brass knuckles.

The invader frowned, showing rows of sharpened teeth, causing the mace-wielder to tremble. “What is it, some kind of- of monster?”

The second bandit grabbed an unlit torch, holding it in the fire and then leaning towards the cave entrance, letting the dancing flames illuminate the hulking figure before them. “No, you idiot,” the swordsman lowered his sword to correct the bandit beside him. “I think it’s one of them dragonkin-“

“I mean you no harm,” a deep, gravelly voice rumbled from the creature.

“Ahh,” the swordsman shrieked, “it’s a monster!” He took the torch in hand and chucked it at the Dragonborn, the tool bouncing off his shirt with little more than a slight singe mark.

Pariv frowned deeper, leaning a bit further onto his good foot. “Scratch that.”

The half-orc rushed forward, wasting no more time on banter, and swung left at the enemy’s head, reaching high. Pariv swung his staff up instinctively, blocking the fist from reaching him but leaving him a bit unsteady on one foot; the bandit noticed this and grinned at the weakness. Feinting left again, the orc baited the dragonborn into raising his staff away from the ground then kicked the right ankle of the attacker. Pariv roared in pain, the sound echoing out of the cave and out into the ravine, leaving behind the creature to nearly collapse against the cave wall to his left for support. At this, the bandit laughed fearlessly and ended it with a full swing of his fist into the extended, wavering head of his enemy.

Ending his turn, anyways. The silver beast growled louder, swinging his own arm up to parry away the fist and looking the half-orc in the face with eyes that began to glow silver. The bandit just looked confused – but he understood the next part well enough. The butt of a quarterstaff drove into the bottom of his chin, pushing his head up and back before a well-placed fist flew into his chest, causing him to stagger back. He started to recover, ready for another round, but one last thud of wood against his temple took him out of the fight.

Pariv had no time to revel in the first victory, however, before a sword swung into his left arm. The relatively close quarters of the cave meant the swing had limited power, but the blade cut into his scales nonetheless. The swordsman pulled the weapon back, jabbing it straight forward towards the dragonborn’s barely-protected heart. The target ran some quick calculations, realizing with fear that he wouldn’t be able to pull the staff back quickly enough to intercept the jab: it was too direct, too quick. The half-orc may have had strength, but this bandit had technique. Pariv did the only thing he could think of, slapping the blade away with his open palm, knocking it off course enough that it only grazed his other arm. He winced as blood steadily dripped down from his left hand, but managed to finally pull the staff back around for another swing.

The swordsman jumped back, avoiding the quarterstaff, and held his sword at the ready next to the fire, bouncing on his toes slightly. Something Pariv couldn’t do. He took inventory: one sprained left ankle, one sore right ankle; one cut left arm and sliced left palm; a quarterstaff in the right hand, of little use against a sword, and a barely-burning torch on the ground beside him. He took half a second to think the shortest prayer to the gods and ancestors… No luck. No magic. The bandits could just wear him down, injury by injury, and take him out with time. And take… and take those hostages. No. That wouldn’t do.

The bandit finally hopped forward while the monster seemed distracted and sliced at its neck, the highest he could reach, but it ducked down, switching the staff to its left hand with a grunt of pain and grabbing at the torch at its side. The bandit was suddenly blinded as a burning torch flew back at him from the cave entrance, thudding against his shirt and lighting it aflame. He screamed, swatting at it with both hands, now open, but the flame kept spreading slowly.

The dragonborn didn’t finish him off, though. His attention was completely and unwaveringly focused on the child in the back of the cave. The child being held in the air by the collar of her shirt, courtesy of a panicked, frightened bandit who now held a dagger to her neck. The bandit thought maybe, just maybe, he could get out of the cave with this hostage and escape whatever this creature was that had just dispatched his two partners, but he second-guessed that thought when he heard its voice rumble from the entrance.

“You do not want to do that.”

The bandit’s hand trembled, maybe a bit too much, enough that the enemy would see and know he was scared, enough that-

The blade nicked the child’s neck, a drop of blood slowly tracing its way down her neck amidst tears and sweat, eventually mixing with what smelled to be urine on the cave floor, near where the muffled sobs of her parents originated.

The bandit dropped the dagger. “L- Look, man- uh, thing, I didn’t mean to- you don’t have to-“

“Too late.” The words were filled with anger, with fury, with _rage_. Even across the campfire, the silver light that glowed from his enemy’s eyes was clear to see, a glow that told the bandit he did not have much time left to escape. A glow that told him that the seven-foot-tall, silver-scaled bundle of muscle and scars marching towards him meant business.

He dumped the child onto the ground and darted across the opposite side of the fire, making a break for the exit, but a quarterstaff swung into his calves with such force that he was sure he felt something in his legs crack. His scream was lengthened by the echoes, shortened by the two clawed hands which grasped his prone form and lifted him into the air. He could just see, in the edge of his vision, that the dragonborn now stood firm on both feet; he could feel no wavering in the grip of each hand, even as his shirt was wet with blood from the left. The bandit did not consider this for long, however, before he was thrown into the cave wall with a grunt and two thuds of impact in quick succession as his body landed next to the half-orcs.

Pariv’s attention was drawn back to the terrified panting of the swordsman, who still attempted to put out the fire to no effect, screaming in an equal mix of fear and terror. The invader, adrenaline beginning to wear off, walked to the bandit with a limp that grew more and more pronounced the closer he got. The swordsman shrunk back, closing his eyes, but was surprised to hear that deep voice rumble “Let me help you put that out.”

“Wha- Really?”

The dragonborn quickly sent him stumbling in the direction of the other two downed bandits, towards the cave entrance, before kicking him in the back with his left foot. Forcing down any expression of the pain shooting up and down his ankle, the creature muttered, “Really,” before finally letting loose a roar of pain, of fury, of triumph, all expressed by the blast of icy air that knocked the last bandit to the ground and coated their unconscious forms in frost, extinguishing the burning hole in the swordsman’s shirt.

The bound child watched with an unwavering sense of terror as the campfire was blasted away, leaving no light in the ravine but the fading silver glow of two eyes, seven feet off the ground. She heard her own heartbeat. She heard her parents’ muffled sobs and gasps. She heard a pained groan. She heard a heavy thud against the cave wall and floor. She heard claws lightly tapping across the ground. She heard a _tsk, tsk, tsk, whoosh_ as the torch was reignited and a weary but smiling face greeted her from just off the ground, flames dancing across silver teeth and scales.

She heard herself scream.

Before long, Pariv and the apparently “human” man, the father, supported each other to the end of the ravine, where there was a wide enough animal trail up the side of the cliff wall that they could manage to climb out carefully – the man seemed to have the slightly more onerous side of the mutual help. The mother, less wounded, carried the sleeping child in her arms. Every one of them was hurt, weary, and still a bit frightened, but as Pariv leaned his weight against the staff and wished them farewell, they all felt like whispering a prayer of thanks to the gods… just in the off-chance they were listening.


End file.
